Breathing Fire
Topic: WC - Daily Practice
Tuesday 6:27am 21Aug07

Well, I've hit week two of pain in my left side of my body. It started as a kink in my neck and has turned into some kind of crazy pain that had me crying on Saturday like a little girl. Like a little girl!

I went to my doctor on Friday and he suggested that I take my arthritis meds that I never take. They are doing sweet fuck all, except my feet don't hurt. Small mercies.

I nearly snapped off three people's heads with my teeth yesterday, I was so cranky. The boys knew to stay away from my office. I have no patience when I'm focusing all my energy on pain relief.

The worst thing about living alone is that you still have to do shit when you feel like shit. Going out to get cold meds when you have a cold and picking up groceries when the whole left side of your body radiating the kind of pain that I'd liken to war time torture.

Of course I forgot that the elevator in my building was under maintenance and had to walk up the 4 flights of stairs with my knapsack and the groceries I so smartly purchased on my way home. I'm walking down the hall of apartment building and hadn't noticed that my neighbour was walking behind because I'm actually pep talking myself through each step. She says to me in a snarky voice, "You can't wait for me?"

My back would be up if I wasn't in so much fucking pain. I stopped and turned slowly with the fire coming out of my eyes, nose and mouth and in my harshest, meanest voice I said, "I didn't see you. I'm in physical pain, I've had a hard fucking day at work and now I have to walk up 4 fucking flights of stairs. You can't just fucking say hi?"

Her eyes got really large as she literally shrunk back against the wall. Ducking from the fire breathing pisces dragon, no doubt.
I turned around and started my walk up the 4 flights of stairs.

Seriously, what is with people and their sarcasm? If someone doesn't notice you, can't you just say hi? Is everything really about you all the fucking time?

I realize I'm like an injured animal that attacks for it's own safety. You want to see mean? Piss me off when I'm in pain.

Needless to say, I've been a no show for blogging and my writing. I've had so many hot baths that my skin might slide off my body. I've been applying ice packs and heating pads and have yet to find a position for my left arm that doesn't have me screaming out in pain. Yeah, it's been a delight. When your bra strap hurts...

The cats have been warm electric blankets coming to keep me company in shifts. Even Zelda, who hasn't come to sleep in the bed for months, has been spending copious amount of hours in the bed beside me, staring up into my face and blinking her eyes.

Oh well, one more ice pack before I get dressed and leave for work.

EY

New Moon Promises
Topic: WC - Daily Practice
8:19pm Monday 13Aug07

I got myself home and plunked everything down and sat at my desk and wrote without stopping. Haven't touched the television, haven't checked my email, haven't gone on facebook. I'm believing those voices that I blogged about the other day. I'm believing them when they tell me that it's all going to come out on the page if I take care of the distractions. And boy did I fill some pages!

I've got my piles of books all ready for what I used to do, back in the day when I was learning how to write. Back in the day I didn't know what it was that I had to write about so I'd use the exercises in the books, as if I were in class, and I'd do them. I'd always be so excited to get home from work to see what the next exercise would be and what I'd write because of it. And in very little time, ideas would start popping in my head, and lines of poems, and story characters and the like.

I've been thinking that there was something to that person who didn't fill herself with all sorts of writing pressures and just went with the flow of what came out. And of course the moment that I decided to just do that again I could barely keep up with the words that were coming out for my novel White Wishes.

So day two of the new moon is talking to me. Yesterday, I wrote up my new moon goals and wrote of the distractions that I've got to kick out and the kind of focus that I want to have.

And something has been playing on my mind, goading me. In one of my early morning turn on the television sessions recently, I flipped the channels and stopped momentarily on mtv canada. Jess was talking about how she went to high school with Seth Rogan and his writing partner (I forget his name). She said something along the lines of, "When we were all outside laughing and joking around Seth and his partner were sitting inside writing their movie scripts."

It turns out that they are the guys that did the movie Knocked up and their latest movie that's out is called Superbad. It looks like it will be funny in a Napoleon Dynamite kind of way.

That keeps running through my head because I am that person who does stay back and works on her stuff while everyone else is out laughing and joking and my silence and the voices and my need to hibernate in August as opposed to November is pushing me to embrace it.

Nelly Furtado also said something very similar when she said, "When all my friends were out on weekends going to parties, I was home working on my music."

That's the kind of advice that excites me and keeps me going.
And the jazz musicians that would play one gig and then meet up at an after hours spot and jam together til the wee hours of the morning, pushing each other, competing with each other, playing the mind blowing shit that I can only imagine because it was never recorded, at least most of it wasn't. Fusion. Experimenting (and drugs of course, ha ha).

Some of my favorite songs are the product of those type of sessions. Groups and musicians that get their influences from everywhere. Listen to Spinning Wheel from Blood, Sweat and Tears with that heavy jazz influence and David Clayton Thomas' rock voice. It kills me everytime I listen to it and all I want to do is find a way to write.

Queen's, Somebody to Love, a rock song that is totally a gospel song to my ears with the imitation of the choir and the call and response. Please! Can I get an Amen? ha ha!

Anyway some where in my silence and sweeping away the distractions and just plain old listening, It's all coming back to me.
The passions, the stuff that blows the top off my head and makes me grin and makes me play a song over and over and impacts me and makes me get my butt in chair and write like a fiend.

It's really been hard digging through the muck trying to get myself back to this place. I was really questioning whether it was time to give this racket up and concede that maybe writing isn't supposed to be my thing. Maybe I should just try to be like normal people and work the 9 to 5 job and forget about believing...

I just couldn't remember what gives me that injection not paying attention that I was still collecting (buying more music, buying more books, finding more articles). And a couple of angels have walked beside me telling me in dream like ways to stop focusing on what is wrong and start focusing on what is right, what has always been right. Giving myself permission keeps coming up.

One Angel is golfer dude who is in the exact same (I know that's redundant) position as me. Financially, job wise, dream wise, romance wise and power struggle wise (that's why he paid for my beer and kept me at the bar a couple weeks ago). And we talk it to death, we do, and it's seeping in, and so I'm setting the goal to have White Wishes Book I , the full draft of chapters complete by Dec 31st, 2007.

I'm working on Kali's chapters backwards from Chapter 15 to Chapter 1 and Rachel's chapters in order. Wish me luck!

EY

You can tell
Topic: WC - Daily Practice
Saturday 10:34am 11Aug07

You can tell when my blogging time gets to be a bit too much for me because it starts to get a little too journaly. I find that I do go through cycles where I'm writing entries that I could have just put in my journal instead of on line. It's good to notice those cycles though. And even better not to beat myself up for them. It is just a cycle and eventually I'll move on to the next one.

I'm moving into hibernation mode a tad early this year. For my five days off I stayed close to home and now, with a few friend's show to see this weekend, I again want to stay close to home. There is a level of anticipation though with my early hibernation mode. The anticipation for that all consuming focus that's just around the corner. I feel an inner shift that I can't quite describe but I'm getting quiet. Maybe it's the voices, you know the ones, that tell you what you could do next. Or remind you of what you want. Or get you to sit still and meditate and connect with the magic in the air. Those voices.

Plus I notice that I've been feeling under the weather far more frequently than normal. Of course it's my body's way of telling me to slow down. Get in touch. Be silent. Listen. If I'm quiet enough, the answers will tumble out of me or toward me or something.

I've got books piled up around the apartment. Books I want to read. Books I want to study. Books that remind me of that passion that blocks out the junk of life, like the power struggles. That passion that steps me outside of the woulda, coulda, shoulda's and into the now and what there is that is good. There is a lot that is good.

I'm feeling nervous about the fall television line up because I don't actually want to tape anything this season. Or not much, anyhow. I'm nervous because, even though I dropped a lot of shows last year compared to the year before, I'm feeling not antagonistic but it's like the television is coming to an end for me. Or more aptly, it needs to.

That's it! The early hibernation mode and the inner voices that are getting louder, and the funny feelings toward the television are all about the question, what am I willing to give up in order to realize my dreams? And it brings me to the simplest realization that it's about change, it's time to make some changes in my life, again. And not a moment too soon either, tomorrow is the new moon, a prime opportunity to start anew.

It's time to make changes and it's time to listen. Sweep away the distractions that seem like a good idea at the time. Listen to my body and slow down. Ask myself , again and again, "what do I want? How do I feel? Where do I want to go?"

My friend Jojo and I discussed her current situation, last week. For the first time, for as long as I've known her, she talked about moving back to her home town. I didn't say that I would miss her tremendously. I didn't say, don't worry everything will work out and you won't have to go home. I didn't say anything that might sway her to consider staying in Toronto. I told her, "you have to do what is the best for you. What is going to soothe your heart? What is going to make you feel better about your life?"

Now, most of my friends would say, 'that's you Shelley, that's the kind of advice you give all of us.' As if it's an easy thing for me to do. On the contrary, inside I'm thinking, 'how am I going to survive not having access to this person in my day to day life?' What the fuck am I going to do?

But over the last few days, with the guilt tripping I often do when I don't have the energy to be the all giving supporter, it's slowly dawning on me. I also have to do what is best for me. What is going to soothe my life? What is going to make me feel better? So I miss a few friend's shows this go round. If I'm the friend that gives that kind of advice to everyone, I need to give it to myself as well.

I'm not the person that I used to be, who dropped everything for everyone. Or who shows up for every single performance and every single reading and party and function. But that is still a big aspect of who I am to people. I like to support people, for sure, but I need to feel free to give myself permission to support myself first.
And the people that I give my support to wholeheartedly will have to understand that in return. And I really have to learn how to stop guilt tripping myself about it, when I don't have it to give. That's the big one.

EY

Awaken the Giant
Topic: WC - Daily Practice
Tuesday 3:42pm 7Aug07

It's really muggy and it always amazes me how much more muggy it can be when it rains. You always think the rain will bring the reprieve and are always surprised that it seems to produce the opposite. Oh well! I still have another day off work before I have to face the world again.

Little Miss Zelda is a year old today. She's still pretty small, thankfully. But is the runt of the litter so I don't expect that she'll grow much more. And like a Leo, she is the Queen of the castle.

I haven't totally done the 5 hours straight of writing but have been also using my 5 hours doing some reading pertaining to my writing and motivation and getting and keeping the mindset. It seems that the mention of Anthony Robbins book, Awaken the Giant Within, keeps coming up in my reading. Of course I happen to own it. No surprise. So I've pulled that out and have started reading it again.

It's true that everything is about the way we think about things. Believing we can accomplish what we set out to do. Believing in ourselves. Believing that if you put in the work, something positive will follow. We do get bombarded with all kinds of crap that tells us that we're not enough. Just watch a television show and sit through the commercials. Enough already. We, I, have to find a way to build ourselves up and feel strong and capable and okay exactly as we are.

So that's where I'm at. Loving being home and having the opportunity to focus on my wants for more than just a couple of days. Happy to have a break from the daily power struggles and grateful to remind myself that the life I'm living now was once a dream. I always wanted to have my own place. I talked about it all the time. And now I surround myself with way too many books and music and cats and I can eat cookies for dinner if I want to (something my child self promised that my adult self would do) and I can laze in my bed or write until all hours and more and more.

Sometimes it's the time out that gives us the opportunity to be grateful for the little things. When I'm in the quagmire of chaos next week, I hope that I can take a moment to remind myself that I am living my childhood dream and keep stomping forward towards my adult dream. That's all I can ask.

EY

Power Struggling Leo
Topic: WC - Daily Practice
8:48am Saturday 4Aug07

Well, July Leo was all about power struggles. The person who took on the main Leo characteristic of wanting to be the king of the beasts was making a good go at beating me down and proving her point. It brought me back to my childhood, to some extent. I mostly didn't get it, why the one step sister was in such big competition with me, mostly because I wasn't in competition with her. I didn't get that she believed I had some sort of mysterious power that had she paid any real attention she would have seen that power was not one of the things I could have put on my list of stuff that belonged to me.

When I finally got mad in my late teenage years, I came into my own power but that took a good 6 years before I tried those shoes on and a good year before I could walk comfortably in those shoes.

As I look at present day power struggle, I realize that, a portion of it has to do with my looks. When people can't tell how old I am they have a tendency to think I'm 20 years younger than I am. When in a position of power, the people with the power treat a person of 23 years far different than a person of 43 years. And of course there is the assumption that I'm out partying all the time, which the people who don't know me well assume I'm doing. Plus I'm also, God forbid, not married. So clearly that means that I don't have the same level of seriousness as those childbearing marrieds. And finally, just like in childhood, I feel no need to prove myself nor set the record straight.

Believe what you want to believe about me. I feel no need to control your thoughts or perceptions.

As the one who wants the power puts on the pressure, camps are created and my everpresent predictions. If she fucks up she will have the rude awakening when no one covers her ass nor backs her up. I hope to see this prediction happen in Scorpio. Scorpio is such a great time for revenge. Scorpio's as a whole are the best people for remembering a slight and preparing for that one time when they can sting you to death. I'm not wishing this on her, mind you, I just know that it's inevitable. You can only step on so many toes for so long before all hell breaks loose.

And in the meantime, in order to cope, I've written myself a new affirmation:

I believe that the daily frustrations are the Universe's way of telling me to focus all my energy on my writing. Power struggles are a waste of time.

EY